Amazon Prime Video App Launches on Apple TV [Update: TV App Supported]- Amazon Prime Video's Apple TV app is out in the Canada, the UK, US and several regions in Europe. Prime subscribers can sign into their accounts to watch Amazon Prime exclusive TV series and a collection of movies. The app can play Amazon's 4K video and hooks into Apple's TV recommendations app. Users can also use Apple TV's Siri Remote to search for Amazon content from inside the app.

HBO and Netflix top the list of Golden Globes nominations- Nominations for the Golden Globes were announced Monday morning. Netflix received nine TV nominations including The Crown, Stranger Things, Master of None, Ozark, 13 Reasons Why and Glow. Amazon got two nominations for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Ione for I Love Dick. Hulu got three nominations for Handmaid's Tale. HBO got 12 nominations for Big Little Lies, The Wizard of Lies, Game of Thrones, and The Young Pope.

MGM has released a new behind-the-scenes featurette for Stargate: Origins- MGM has finished production on the Stargate: Origins series a released a behind the scene featurette. The series is a prequel to the movie and television shows, following Catherine Langford, daughter of the person who discovered the Stargate and seems to be set in pre- World War II Egypt. The series is set to arrive on the Stargate Command streaming service in early 2018.

The Hollywood Drama Around Annihilation Shows Why We Can't Have Smart Things- Hollywood Reporter says the movie Annihilation will be distributed by Paramount in United States, Canada, and China but handled by Netflix elsewhere. That would apparently mean hitting Netflix 17 days after the theatrical debut in February. The odd decision seems to be driven by a dispute between the producers. David Ellison allegedly thinks the movies is too complicated and intellectual but Scott Rudin has final cut and likes it as is.- Annihilation stars Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, and Gina Rodriguez and is based on the book by Jeff VanderMeer .

DirecTV Now has reached 1 million subscribers- AT&T announced DirecTV Now has passed 1 million subscribers. This puts it on pace to catch Dish's Sling TV service which has 1.7 million. DirecTV Now plans to add DVR and live TV pausing plus 4K HDR, individual profiles and downloadable content all int he next year.

Dispatches from the FrontGreetings valued employees!

It's been a year since I started my Cord-Killing Odyssey and thought I'd share some thoughts about it.

TL:DR - A year in and LOVING not having to be paying any money to Comcast.

A brief recap on why I had to start this journey...

We don't watch any TV live, it's all time-shifted, thanks to living with TiVo for more than a decade so having some sort of recording option was extremely important to me.

November 2016 Comcast changed the MPEG stream on their service which was incompatible with my HD TiVo. I did not want to buy a new TiVo when my current one worked just fine.

I had (and still have) Century Link as my ISP with a 50MB down/5 up service (still waiting for Gigabit like my son has at his place - jealous!).

PlayStation Vue had recently launched and seemed like a good fit for us with an Apple TV app and an app on the Amazon Fire Stick and I also have a PlayStation so I signed up.

It's been a year now with PlayStation Vue and so far I have to give the service high marks overall. With an OTA antenna for local channels (mainly PBS shows and the occasional network show) my HD TiVo is still chugging along nicely.

Sony just this month raised my fee to $39 from the original $29 per month. Even at that I still have all the channels my wife and I want. She gets all her news crap and I get my BBC America, USA Network, SyFy, and NBC Sports network for Rugby and Formula 1 (which is moving to EPSN2 in 2018) for more than $100 less per month than I was paying to Comcast for cable TV. You read that right, I'm still saving more than $100 a month by killing the cord.

My only real complaint about PlayStation Vue has nothing to do with the service, it's the Apple TV. I hate the remote. I constantly pick up the remote backwards or hit the TV button instead of pause and pop out of the app. What kind of idiot designed this thing? Did they ever use it in their multi-millionaire home theater or do they have dedicated servants to change channels and volume for them?

OK, remote rant aside, I am like Brian and want a single box for everything. I'm lazy that way. Now that Amazon has finally released their app for the Apple TV I can now use one box to view all my "online" content.

I have a PlayStation 3 which I purchased solely for the Blu-Ray player. Remember when Netflix released an App on DVD for the PlayStation that allowed you to stream content and then eventually release an app for the PlayStation natively? I used the PlayStation for viewing both Netflix and Amazon Prime and movies for a long time. Then I got an Apple TV and I noticed that was using the PlayStation less and less frequently as I did not want to go through the hassle of finding that remote, turning it on, waiting for it to start up and warn me about not spending too much time playing video games (which I have never done on the PlayStation), and flipping the receiver to the PlayStation input. Since Netflix had an app on Apple TV I used it instead and Amazon Prime content was mostly forgotten about and never considered when deciding what to watch. That app was almost too late.

Like Tom, I am finding myself using the TV app on the Apple TV more and more for content on Hulu because the interface on Hulu sucks with the stupid Apple TV remote. Amazon now being tied in will probably make the TV app and Amazon content more useful to me.

One thing I'd like to share about the past year is how my TV and movie watching habits have changed. For the most part I never turn on the TV unless I already have plans to watch something. I used to occasionally just turn the TV on and watch what I found interesting by flipping through the channels. I think Brian calls this Waterfall TV. No more chasing waterfalls for this guy.

Being so appointment-oriented to watching TV (or movies) now I don't browse for content or just happen across content that is interesting to watch. I rely on you guys and the fellow listeners/viewers/fans of Cord Killers for insights on what to watch. I've watched several items that Bryce has highlighted in his "What to watch" segment. That Norseman show really stands out as an odd but funny item.

Since I still rely on you I am still continuing my pledge to you on Patreon. I encourage others to do so as well.

Last week Brian was asking if you thought a new TV was worth buying. I'd like to suggest that you get Robert Heron once in a while if possible to help cover some hardware. I'm sure he would be willing to offer advice for good values at certain price points.

If any of my ramblings are useful feel free to edit and use them as you see fit.

Keep up the GREAT work, gentlemen!

Regards,- Todd

Greetings Cordkillers crew,

My house has been 100% cordcutting since 2012, but it wasn't until this year that we ran into the issue of continuously exceeding our 1 TB data cap with Xfinity. The culprit, in my mind, is our transition to streaming HD content pretty all day, everyday as background noise for our twin toddlers, which typically ends up being a small number for Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks movies on repeat. (The Shrek and Cars movies are all the rage right now.)

I could add unlimited streaming for $50 extra per month, but I don't think it makes much sense to pay the extra $600 per year. We mainly stream from our Apple TV, and I wanted a solution that doesn't deviate from this routine (such as purchasing a Mac Mini and playing downloaded content locally).

I had dabbled with iTunes Home Sharing before and deemed it our best option, so I downloaded the movies we own on iTunes to our iMac. But, we ran into a snag when they wouldn't play on our Apple TV. I spoke with an Apple support rep, and even though I'm still using Apple products and services, Home Sharing won't stream downloaded iTunes files because it wants users to stream the content from the Movies app. The same rep also suggested using Plex and VLC on Apple TV, which I attempted, but didn't work because the iTunes files have DRM.

To continue down this path, my only recourse was to purchase a tool to convert and strip the DRM from the iTunes files, which has made it possible to use Home Sharing and (hopefully) ease our data cap burdens. I do realize this course of action is most certainly against Apple's TOS, and could straddle the line of legality as well. I personally don't have a moral quandary with it, however, because I own the movies and simply want to make it more convenient for personal use. I'm also very annoyed that Apple doesn't make this option easier.

All of this makes me concerned about my eventual transition to 4K. My speed and bandwidth should be able to handle streaming 4K content, but unless data caps are lifted or I'm willing to shell out that extra $50 per month, I may hold of on 4K for a lot longer than I would otherwise.